Metaphysics of Motherhood

Anaxagoras, also born near Miletus but then living in Athens for a time, agrees with Empedocles, his contemporary, that Parmenides was right about change: all that we call change is just a re-arranging. But nothing actually comes out of nothing or passes into nothing, for no-thing does not exist and so this is impossible. For Empedocles, bone for example, would be made up of a certain ratio of earth, water, air and fire. But Anaxagoras showed this to be false: if the ratio is disturbed, then the elements are no longer bone, and so bone really does pass out of existence. Instead, Anaxagoras held that a bone, such as a femur, is made of bone matter. The Smallest particle is bone. Bone is made up of small bones; flesh is made up of miniature flesh, and so forth. These elements are eternal and have always existed.

But this presents a problem: when a child eats bread and milk, and grows hair and larger bones, how does bone come from what is not bone? His answer is that bread and milk and all food contains little bits of bone and hair and so forth. This leads to his larger thesis that “In everything there is a portion of everything.”

In addition to matter being described thus so, Anaxagoras posits Mind, Logos, which controls nature. Plato records Socrates telling of his interest in the natural philosophers in his youth, and then coming across Anaxagoras, and being very excited by his description of Mind. For, Socrates says, “I was delighted with this; it seemed somehow right that Mind should be the cause of all things, and I thought that if this were the case then Mind, in arranging all things, would arrange things in the way that was best for it.” (Phaedo, 97B).

 

This is getting ahead of ourselves, but do you see the huge metaphysical jump forward that Socrates makes here in his reflection on Anaxagoras? Mind would arrange matter in a way that is best for it.  Best? How do you get an evaluation, a value at all, out of atoms or particles? If some particles gather and form a bone and then the bone decays and those particles disperse, what is good or bad about that? From a materialist perspective, it is value-less. It is just a datum, a fact, something to be observed or described. . . but not evaluated. For something to be evaluated, it is deemed good or bad, better or worse, best or worst. Where do these value judgements come from? The young Socrates longed for a philosophical account of what is best for things. And yet the natural philosophers could not provide it. Anaxagoras did, it is true, posit Mind. But Socrates is disappointed to discover that after mentioning it, he rarely refers to it, describing most of reality in terms of the arrangement of the elements.

Next we look at Empedocles, who is influenced by his predecessors the Milesians, Pythagoras, Heraclitus as well as Parmenides. Empedocles holds that the soul is immoral, trapped in an earthly body of decay (think Pythagoras). The soul may purify itself and rise to higher and higher ranks of perfection. As for the material world, it is composed of four elements—earth, air, fire and water (think the Milesians). They do not coming into being or pass out of existence. Instead they mingle and then separate, always in flux. And what moves them? Two principles, named Love and Strife. So yes, even Hesiod shows up in Empedocles’ writings. Love and Strife are not physical realities, but principles of force, either drawing elements together (Love) or pushing them apart (Strife). Love, for example, keeps all the bones and limbs of a body together. While he sometimes speaks of Love and Strife in physical terms, often he does not. It is clearly a metaphysical insight bursting out of the ground and blooming like a sapling in early spring.

If Heraclitus asked the question of the one and the many, Parmenides gives us a rigid answer. He breaks with the method of the Milesians who began with observations from nature, and begins instead with a logical argument, prescinding from the senses.

Reason tells us that what is, is one. And thus it cannot also be many.

This is Parmenides’ main point: that reality is an eternal, unchanging unit, and thus change is an illusion. This thesis is dramatically anti-experiential and contradicts the observations of the senses.

Here is his line of thinking.

1. Thought and being are the same; you cannot think any anything except what is. You cannot think of what does not exist. Non-being is not a possible object of thought, because if you did think about it, it would be an object, and thus not non-being at all. [This is in my view the birth of EPISTEMOLOGY, the study of knowledge. Parmenides is the first person to describe knowledge and its object, and to describe the contingency of knowledge on reality.]
2. It is necessary to think and say what is.
3. Coming into being is impossible. For to come into existence means for a thing not to exist, and then to come into existence. But a thing cannot not exist, because then it would not be a thing at all. It would be no-thing.
4. Going out of existence is likewise impossible. We cannot say “a thing no longer exists” because if it no longer exists, then it is no thing, and nothing is not a possible object of thought. Not-being is not the opposite of being like night is the opposite of day. It does not stand for anything at all.
5. Therefore it does not make sense to speak of coming into being or passing out of existence.

This argument represents a radical break with the past, because the Milesians took for granted the observations of the senses and the change, the processes of coming into existence and passing away. But for Parmenides, logic and the intellect are superior to the senses, and if reason has shown us what is and is not a possible object of thought, then so much the worse for observation. Observation, to him, is the way of illusion.

Parmenides develops his reasoning about reality. He has established that it cannot come into existence or pass out of existence. So it is eternal. It cannot change in its properties, for that too involves coming in and out of non-being, which is impossible. So reality is eternal and unchanging. It is non-temporal, it is indivisible and necessary. In one passage he describes it as spherical, since to the Greeks, the sphere is perfect. It could not be infinite, for Parmenides, since the infinite is less than perfect. It is “full of what is.”

Parmenides will re-emerge in our study when we study the atomists as well as Plato. The atomists held that the world of nature is composed of atoms, and they have all these same qualities of Parmenides’ reality. The atomists are able to account for change and observation, which Parmenides was not, all the while maintaining the logic of Parmenidean thought and describing reality as fundamentally composed of Parmenidean atoms.

Plato, too, will draw on Parmenides. Some scholars say that Plato’s two worlds—an immaterial world of eternal, unchanging forms, and the material world of the senses—amount to a wedding of Parmenides and Heraclitus. Plato’s world of forms corresponds to Parmenides’ description of reality, and his world of sensible particulars corresponds the Heraclitus’ description of the world of flux.

All of this will advance our pursuit of a metaphysics of motherhood, as we are seeking to know whether what matters to a mother—the intrinsic value of her child and the importance of her child’s thriving—are myth or reality. If all her child is, is a bundle of cells and they are but bundles of atoms, and they are constantly in flux and have no enduring reality, then it is hard to locate her child’s intrinsic value. If something, for its short duration, is constantly changing, can’t be pinpointed or grasped, and then it passes out of existence, its almost impossible to demonstrate any value to it. For what is “it,” really? Isn’t “it” being a thing at all a myth? It is just atoms in flux, or as modern physicists would say, just energy. How do we value energy? It seems to me that we might impose value as a mental construct, we might intend for it to have value, but this is an imposition from without. It is like a child adopting a grasshopper and loving it with all his heart as his closest friend. The grasshopper has been given dignity from without, but it is not innate. In fact, in itself it does not have value. Innate value should exist, even if all people with their thoughts and opinions were to vanish. If you take all people away, 2+2 still equals 4. Is it possible to demonstrate that, in an analogous way, human beings have worth? Worth that is more fundamental than a person’s opinion? If so, then a mother’s love for her child and sense of her intrinsic worth makes the mother wise. If it is not, then she is delusional. Everything rests on it and hangs in the balance of metaphysics.

Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, not far from Miletus, around 500 B.C. Heraclitus is not so much interested to know the causes of many things—the causes of thunder, lightning, and earthquakes—but to know the one thing that underlies all these things. This, to him, is wisdom. For him, not only does he see what Anaximenes described as air dilating and compressing, but Heraclitus saw it as a grand cycle: as water evaporates out of the sea, then it falls back in again as rain. He posits: “All things come into being through opposition, and all are in flux like a river.” The world is continual movement: “This world-order, the same for all, no god made or any man, but it always was and is and will be an ever-lasting fire, kindling by measure and going out by measure.” Fire is the element he chooses to represent continual motion. But to him, all things are like fire, all the elements engaged in perpetual movement. Plato says of Heraclitus that nothing is at rest; he says you could not step in the same river twice. (Craytlus 402A)

 

This is a profound philosophical insight corroborated by modern natural science. In middle school biology I learned that the human body completely regenerates every seven years, so that no cell in my 45-year-old body existed in my, say, 30-year-old body. Quantum theory also maintains the constant motion of sub-atomic particles. The material world of the senses is, as far as I understand, exactly as Heraclitus described it—always in flux.

But Heraclitus also believed in a Logos, a Mind, that has an independent existence. Knowledge of it is hard to acquire, but worth the pursuit. Human beings are entirely separate from and other than the divine, and yet they are connected as by a thread. Living in moderation, as the Delphic oracle says, is how to be wise.

Heraclitus’ main achievement was to identify the question of the one and the many. What is reality, one or many? His answer is “Both.” Just as the river is one river, and yet the water is always passing and never static, so is reality like the river: all things are changing, and yet there are persistent realities. This is the great paradox, to Heraclitus, and the question of the one and the many endured for many generations.

Heraclitus will be important for us in the development of a metaphysics of motherhood, for he describes reality so well—as always in flux—and yet finds some principles that endure. This is the essence of metaphysics: to find that which persists, that which is real and constant, despite the eternal flux of the material world. As a mother, everything is in flux, from the life of your child to the maternal instincts and inclinations and efforts you put forth. Sitting at your son’s graduation or your daughter’s wedding, doesn’t it all seem like a blur of constant motion? Isn’t that part of the paradox of it all being so wonderful and beautiful? How does such beauty and honor arise out of that big, chaotic mess we call motherhood? This is to think like Heraclitus. And from the flux, when we find what is constant, true and beautiful, we have succeeded in our metaphysical endeavor.

Mathematics is fundamental to the Pythagorean view. First, geometry originated in Egypt but was transformed in Greece. The Egyptians were flooded each year by the Nile, and so geometry (the study of land, as the name implies), was developed to help them retain their land boundaries. But when geometry was passed to the Greeks, who had no such physical or practical need, they pursued geometry and all mathematics as a “liberal” study—freed from practical needs. Not only was it a study of freemen as opposed to slaves, but it was a study capable of making a man free (Robinson, p. 67). Mathematics became a means of freeing the soul from practical, physical demands. To Pythagoras, mathematics is a way to free the soul and make it ready for the divine. So it could be said that Pythagoras invented the liberal arts.

Additionally, and more profoundly, Pythagoras comes to believe in number and ratio underlying all of nature. The monochord was a one-stringed instrument. By stopping the string at various intervals and plucking the string, you get the octave, the major fifth and the major fourth—the principles of Greek music. The ratios that create melody and harmony are what make the music on the string. This was Pythagoras’ chief insight: that number and ratio underly all of reality. As Aristotle describes the Pythagoreans:

They thought that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things. . . Seeing that the properties and ratios of the musical consonances were expressible in numbers, and that indeed all other things seemed to be wholly modelled in their nature upon numbers, they took numbers to be the whole of reality, the elements of numbers to be the elements of all existing things, and the whole of heaven to be a musical scale and a number. (Metaphysics, I. 5. 985 b 23)

The Pythagorean view that number underlies all of nature, or that all things are number, may seem far-fetched. But two hundred years later, Archimides used it to create a science of mechanics, and later Galileo took it as foundational for his own work. Galileo writes:

Philosophy is written in the great book which is ever before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it. (Galileo, Opere Complete di Galileo Galilei, Firenze, 1842, IV, 171)

To Pythagoras, not only is number the language of nature, but the celestial spheres make sounds (by virtue of their whirling) that are a vast, cosmic harmony. This idea, in addition to his view of the immortal soul in bondage within the body, influenced all subsequent Greek thought and through Plato, the whole of the Western tradition.

 

One of my all-time favorites, Pythagoras is in my personal view the key to understanding the metaphysical tradition of ancient Greece. While I don’t think I would have been one of his followers if I had known him (he was an ascetic and required performing all sorts of purification rituals to detach us from this earthly world), I can’t get enough of thinking about him.

Pythagoras was from Samos, an island off the coast of Miletus. But he left Samos due to his rebellion against a tyrannical government there and fled to southern Italy. In the Greek settlement of Croton, at the age of 40, he gathered a large number of followers and for most of the rest of his life, they were political rulers in the area.

For many years, the teachings of Pythagoras were a secret. But what was reported later was that he held certain doctrines: 1) the soul is immortal; 2) it migrates to other kinds of animals; 3) that the same events are repeated in cycles, nothing being new; 4) all things with souls should be regarded as akin. These doctrines are either original to Pythagoras or he learned of them in his travels to the East, but scholars agree that he was the one who introduced them to the Greek world.

Pythagoras’ belief that the soul is immortal is a massive claim. To most ancient Greeks, only the gods of Olympus are immortal. So, to say that the human soul is immortal is a daring position to hold. It became defining for subsequent Greek philosophers, however. From Socrates to Plato, and then Aristotle who says: “

 

We ought not to obey those who tell us that a man should think a man’s thoughts, and a mortal the thoughts of a mortal. On the contrary, we should endeavor as far as possible to become immortal, and to do all that we can to live in accordance with what is highest in us. (Nicomachean Ethics, X.7.1177 b 32)

 

The soul being immortal also introduces the mind body problem: if the soul is immortal, and the body is mortal, then how do they relate? How do they connect with each other? We saw a precursor to this issue when Hesiod suggested that Love entered the world in an egg: Love is immaterial (not material) whereas an egg is material. How do they even connect? How do you get Love in an egg? Similarly, how do you get an immortal soul in a body? This is one of the most important issues in philosophy even today. Contemporary neuroscience will maintain that all human experiences, even things like prayer or love, are all actually results of brain chemistry. That is to say they are physical, and all appearance of something beyond the physical is a misunderstanding or mistake. From the 8^th century B.C. to the present, it is always an issue to explain how immaterial things and material things connect, and it is always a temptation to explain the problem away by claiming that all things are actually material.

I’m going to take a pause here from Pythagoras to apply these reflections to motherhood. What if I were to say to you, “Your love for your child is just hormones and brain chemistry. When your toddler fell off the jungle gym at the park, and when your teenager lost the point on the basketball court, you felt love and empathy for your child—so you think. You imagine that you have maternal experiences that are real love. You scooped up your child and coddled him and soothed him as he cried. After the game, you took her out for a milkshake and told her that everyone misses shots sometimes, even Michael Jordan. You give your heart and pour it out for your child out of love. This relates to the two principles I mentioned: A) the value of your child as a human being, his or her infinite worth; and B) the importance of your child thriving, being able to recover from hurts and setbacks and continue seeking to become the fullness of who he or she is capable of becoming.

The question is: Is this a mirage? Is this an illusion? Is it really just chemicals in the brain? Survival of the fittest? Is it a chemical reaction that we call “love,” but that is just giving a metaphysical name to a physical event? This is a huge question, a really important question. If you are following this, and see all that rests on the answer, then you are well into a metaphysical inquiry.

How does Pythagoras explain how the soul is united to the body? He says, “For the sake of punishment the soul is yoked to the body and buried in it as a tomb.” (Philolaus). The Pythagorean view is that the body and soul do not belong together, are of totally different orders of reality, and are joined only for a short time but the association is fleeting.

The way to live, then according to Pythagoras, is to always remember what is divine in us, and seek to detach from what is earthly and inferior. He believed in the transmigration of souls, or otherwise put, reincarnation. The goal is to live this current life so detached from the body that one is finally released from the cycle of reincarnation and remain in the divine realm of immaterial divinity forever.